Quote:CHICAGO, Dec. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- United Airlines today announced plans to launch nonstop service on several new international and domestic routes beginning in the spring of 2013, including:

New flights to Latin America from Chicago and Washington, D.C.
New service to Canada from Denver, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Additional domestic routes from Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Well balanced growth, pretty much everyone gets something in this announcement except CLE and SFO (although SFO has had some adds like FLL within recent weeks). Santa Fe is a nice addition, popular tourist area. But what I'm most impressed is this quote from the announcement; "Fort McMurray will be United's 18th destination in Canada. "

Quote:Fort McMurray is considered the heart of one of Alberta's (and Canada's) major hubs of oil production, located near the Athabasca Oil Sands. Besides the oil sands, the economy also relies on natural gas and oil pipelines, forestry and tourism. Oil sand companies include Syncrude, Suncor Energy, CNRL, Shell, and Nexen.

Yup, and it looks like UA continues to take advantages of cross-fleeting. The 738 is the right airplane for ORD-FAI, and up to the merger, UA didn't have any of those. It's the same story with the 319 on EWR-YEG.

I went through IAD yesterday and continue to be surprised by the number of 737s, which I think have outnumbered Airbii the last few times I've been there. On the Express side, there are gobs of Dashes. That's all good news.

UA is building upon CO's success in Central America with the ORD and IAD additions, in this area (Central America) the only thing one could wish for would be to bring back the Central America routes UA acquired from Pan Am:

Quoting kgaiflyer (Reply 6):It's not that Americans want to go to YMM. It's that folks in YMM want to get out, and the new nouveau-riche have the money to do it.

Good-bye tar-sand smell -- hello Mexican riviera.

I know I know been there myself and it stinks (of money and chemicals) ! Still though given that people from there can work up to 2 weeks, 12 hours per day no weekend straight and then go home for a week or two, I would think Chicago or New-York would be better destinations due to the fact that some people there come from all over the world!

Going to the Mexican Riviera on your own does get tiring! Better go and see the wife or the girlfriend no? (if you have one at least)

The choice to go YMM to DEN seems influenced by the fact folks want to holiday. That often equates to somewhere warm such as Latin America or possibly Hawaii/California. DEN provides service to all of those locations and you can also connect to flights headed east or south-east if desired.

Quoting BoeingGuy (Reply 17):Quoting Roseflyer (Reply 14):
Will ORD-FAI be the farthest east Fairbanks has ever had nonstop service to?

PA used to do JFK-FAI as part of JFK-FAI-NRT.

The FAI stop ended in 1976 when they began the first JFK-NRT nonstops with the 747SP. I expect they would have preferred to stop at ANC previously but Pan Am never had ANC traffic rights before deregulation.

DEN-YMM is 1041 nm, blocked at 3 hours. LAX-ICT is also blocked at around 3 hours, and is 1045 nm. Those are long flights for CR7s (not in terms of operational capability but in terms of sitting on an RJ for that long)! I remember when UA operated an OO CR7 from ATL-DEN; it was about the same distance, and man was that a long flight. Not that I minded, but an E170 (which is what UA currently uses on that route) would have been nice at the time.

The DEN-YMM-DEN schedule shows the northbound flight arriving at 2318 and the southbound flight leaving at 0600. Is that enough crew rest time? Including the time to get to/from a hotel they would barely have 4 hours for sleep. Or would the crew spend 2 nights in YMM?

I think the YEG-EWR flight was just a matter of time. The market has always been there and it is nice to see UA further solidify their presence in the YEG market (with now 5 destinations).

I also think that YMM flight will do quite well for them. Don't know what they will charge, but people up there have too much money to burn and they will take this flight over connecting in YEG or YYC to save a few bucks